What is “Google Juice,” or Page Authority, and Why Is It Important?

As you work toward optimizing your website for search engines, there are a variety of factors that impact where you will appear in the search results. One of them is your page authority, or what Google has termed PageRank™. This algorithm is an attempt to figure out how authoritative your page is, based on who trusts it enough to reference it as part of their website. After all, one major way that websites are connected is through hyperlinks to other web pages. Search engines can detect who is linking to your website, and they can use that information to note that other people see you as influential, relevant, and authoritative.

Page Authority is only one of the two major things that influence your rankings: relevance is the more commonly known one, which has to do with the keywords you use. Page Authority, however, is independent of keywords: your page authority is a level that applies to all potential keywords!

1. Link Back to Authoritative Sites That Influence You

One of the ways to first start ‘paying it forward’ is to use relevant external and internal links in your own content. External links help you build connections to high-influence sites, and they establish your authority for those who are reading your content. Your internal links are also helpful: while they don’t make you more influential, necessarily, they make it easier for both visitors and search engine crawlers to move through your website. It allows you to more clearly direct people to the pages that you want to rank highly and be influential!

2. Guest Post and Send Your Content to Influencers Who Can Benefit From It

You cannot be sure that people will want to use your content in their own website design, but if you create valuable resources related to your industry, it cannot hurt to share these things with the owners of the websites on your “linking wish list!” If you also respect their content, you can propose a mutual benefit of citing their information in your content as well. These are forms of gaming the system, but if you are truly interested in their content, it is an authentic connection. Another way to create these external links is to “guest post” – in your capacity as part of your own company, write a piece of content for a popular online publication or an influential blog. These opportunities allow you to access the audience of that site, as well as getting a high-ranking site to link back to yours.

3. Share and Promote Your Content

Excellent content deserves to be shared! By using digital marketing services to get your content out there in the world through social media, PPC advertising, and more, you can get more people to encounter your content and cite it in their own content. To learn more, read about SEO services on our website or contact us for a free evaluation.